Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p31c..03j&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P31C-03
Other
2723 Magnetic Reconnection (7526, 7835), 2732 Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, 2753 Numerical Modeling, 6218 Jovian Satellites, 6222 Ganymede
Scientific paper
The Galileo spacecraft visited Ganymede six times passing through different regions of the moon's magnetosphere. On the two low latitude passes on the upstream side, the G8 and G28 flybys, the spacecraft detected large amplitude waves in the magnetic field at the magnetopause crossings. In particular, the wave amplitude was larger during the G8 pass in which the spacecraft passed closer to the nose of the upstream magnetopause than it did on the G28 pass. Whether the observed oscillations were spatial structures or resulted from temporal variations of the magnetopause is not clear although it has been proposed to be surface waves caused by the Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities on the magnetopause (Kivelson et al., 1998). We have conducted three-dimensional MHD simulations, which model the interaction between the Jovian plasma and Ganymede's magnetosphere, that enable us to investigate the properties of Ganymede's magnetopause boundaries. We examine the temporal variation of the system in detail and find that for the conditions during the G8 pass, the magnetopause identified in our simulation oscillates in regions consistent with the locations where large amplitude oscillations were seen in the magnetometer data. Bursty plasma flows associated with magnetic reconnection occurring near the upstream equator are observed in the vicinity of the magnetopause in our simulations. Because the ambient Jovian magnetic field is always nearly anti- parallel to Ganymede's intrinsic field at the equator, we attribute the observed boundary oscillations to temporal variations associated with magnetic reconnection at the magnetopause. We have performed similar analyses on other passes and will present comparisons with the Galileo observations.
Galland Kivelson Margaret
Jia Xun
Khurana Krishan K.
Linker Jon A.
Walker Ray J.
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